3 poems from Mukund Gnanadesikan

"Words Have No Power to Impress the Mind"  After Edgar Allan Poe

The passing decades remind me of caducity, 

show me its open jaws, the esurience 


of its mud-splattered embouchure.

I give admittance to regrets


remembering the rabid rantings 

of my callow youth, the malapert pronouncements


of a deluded mooncalf.

Juvenile hope’s audacity

went easy down the weasand

but kickshaw victuals now have left me flat.

 
Too late, clarity arrives, carries me to bed,

calls me a gudgeon as I await his final judgment.

George

We can’t breathe.

I know our mortal hands bear bonds of guilt
but you are not my jury, nor my judge.
Please, imagine shouting neighbors, weeping wives.

We can’t breathe.

Surely mutual respect constructs life’s adamant foundation,
and compassion slides her fingers underneath your badge?
Instead, your hateful knee compresses airway like a belt.

We can’t breathe.

Behind steel bars, karma has arrived-
how does its touch feel, man in blue now clad in orange?
The clank of chains’ constriction cannot tell you how we felt.

We still can’t breathe.

A Mariner's Memory

Salty darkness slips
through the window sash,
the gentle waves: swish, crash
meeting their final match,
ruined on limpet-crusted rocks.

Across the narrow bight,
the schooner’s her moonlit prow belligerent,
Dismissive of the tides, recalcitrant
to slapping, cold voices of aqueous dissent
that babble at the harbor buoy’s rusting sides.

In the lighthouse,
throbbing white pulsations
intermittent gleaming indications
of impending dawn’s embrace.


Bio: Mukund Gnanadesikan is a poet, novelist, and physician who lives in Northern California. His first novel, “Errors of Omission” was released in 2020. A sample of his recent poetry can be seen in Poetry Quarterly, Ginosko Review, and Remington Review.

3 poems by Mukund Gnanadesikan: Foreword, First Impression, Non Native


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